My Cat

She was brown with sploches of grey and a white tummy. A pink nose and a split tail that made it furry like a squirrels. And wicked yellow eyes with specks of green and gold.They were squeezed shut the first day I held her.

She fit right into my palm and was a few minutes old.After nursing she didnt go to sleep like the rest of her siblings. With her nose sniffing she crawled around till she found my finger. Her tiny head resting on it she went off to sleep.Well from the finger, then palm, then the crook of the arm and finally the tummy the progress didnt really take more than a few months.

She d be at the door everyday waiting for me to get back from school.And jump into my arms and lick my face with her sandpaper tongue.Then we d have lunch together, she sitting on my lap with the bowl raised up right up to her nose and then an afternoon siesta again on my lap was well next on the agenda.

In between this she did make time to fly off the second floor balcony of our apartment failing a running contest with my neighbours Alsation dog. Two cracked ribs and a bloody nose didnt stop her from getting to a pigeon on the balcony above a month later. And this time she spent a couple of hours dangling from a water pipe right where no one could reach her.

Well the absence of mice didnt really dampen her hunting spirit. She did manage to catch pigeons and sparrows right by the neck and drop them at my feet. Well looking how skinny I was growing up I guess she just wanted to feed me. She didnt kill them or hurt them so I just had to scoop her up and move away so that the dazed bird could fly off.

She had her babies on my lap and insited on living there till she discovered my parents bed. The arrangement was perfect because well she coudnt have kept an eye on me and the babies at the same time right? So she kept at my heel while my mum cared for the babies.A couple of months later she topped the record number of days for recovery after being neutered. 21 days. She split her stitches five times jumping in excitement when she saw me.

And did she love her babies!!! She would lovingly clean them all over move them a couple of inches apart, put her head on the tummy of one and feet on the other and go to sleep. I did try telling her thats not what babies are for but I guess mothers know best.

She looked over me all through school and college. I mean literally sitting next to the books and looking at me every day as I studied.And then I had to move cities. New job new apartment. And no I couldnt take her. You see she mauled people she didnt know from birth. So I d speak to her on the phone every day and I d hop over home for a visit over the weekend.

Then came the day when I had to move again and this time to a different country. For a guy she didnt like much the first time they met. So I promised her the daily calls and yearly visit and she went off sulking onto my mothers lap.
She didnt believe me.

I missed my one year mark. She died a couple of weeks later.